SUWIN error when attempting to install Windows 95 OSR 2.5 in VM in VMWare Fusion 12 on MacOS Big Sur Beta 6

[herrugatto]

When I create a Windows 95 VM with a boot disk mounted.

I formatted the virtual drive,  managed to get past the setup screen, and agreed to EULA but the general protection fault in module VGA.drv at 0001:0C75 is preventing me from proceeding.

I tend to create old Windows VMs for my nostaligic pleasure.

[Dave59242]

Same problem for me 😞 on MacOS Big Sur 11.4 (macbook pro intel)

[jfaulken]

Did you ever figure out the solution to this? It's still happening on the retail release as well.

[Dave59242]

no solution at all 😕

[wila]

Hi,

You probably have to use nested VM's in order to get this to work. The reason being that Binary Translation mode was removed from VMware Fusion a few versions ago.

Eg. install a Windows 10 VM, then in that VM install VMware Workstation 12 (not later) and nested within VMware Workstation setup you can then install Windows 95.

Of course you could do the same with VMware Fusion 7 in an older macOS guest, but then you need to be aware that there's no 3D acceleration at all.

--
Wil

[magicman256]

Change the resolution under the Display settings in the VM to 1024x768. That worked for me.

[MythTW]

Yea, set vga to 1024x768 solved my problem

Thank you!!

svga.maxHeight = "768"
svga.maxWidth = "1024"
svga.autodetect = "FALSE"
svga.vramSize = "3145728"

[nickdoesstuff]

i use workstation pro 17

and that didnt work

maybe binary translation was removed in 17

should i downgrade to 16?

[wila]

Hi,

---

@nickdoesstuff wrote:

i use workstation pro 17

and that didnt work

maybe binary translation was removed in 17

should i downgrade to 16?

---

Binary Translation was removed in VMware Workstation 14.

There's a number of problems with trying to run Windows 95 and 98 on today's CPUs.

You might want to have a look at https://github.com/JHRobotics/patcher9x as it has patches for Windows 9x to be able to run as a VM.

--
Wil

[nickdoesstuff]

thx ima try, maybe workstation 12 compatibility wasnt enough

but how exactly does it work?

EDIT:

i was looking for a solution to that suwin error from the discussion

it happened to me too, and patcher9x doesnt seem to do anything about it

setting vga to 1280x720 didnt work for me

and i dont wanna downgrade vmware workstation pro 17 to 12

[nickdoesstuff]

also when i tried installing windows 95 osr2 in workstation 16 pro, it worked without the need to change vga settings or nested virtualization

[nickdoesstuff]

wait a sec i just had to disable 3d accel

[paterakisa]

How did you do this?